


cutting steps in the roof of the world

by TheGoodDoctor



Series: to be as one is [2]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon, discussion of legacy, the suggestion of period-typical attitudes and sexism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 14:10:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21321472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGoodDoctor/pseuds/TheGoodDoctor
Summary: legacy, n.: 1) that which is passed down to later generations2) all that we may leave behind, in the endon having a right to a place in history.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Series: to be as one is [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2013112
Comments: 26
Kudos: 134
Collections: Trans Terror Week





	cutting steps in the roof of the world

Francis has never understood Sophia so well as he does now, with the letter burning a hole into their dining room table. _ Capt. J. Fitzjames _ glares out from the parchment, the hard-won title now somehow at fault for this unease and uncertainty, and Francis has never hated the duties of a Captain so much as he does now. Francis remembers well how he and James had quietly celebrated his being made a full captain: a small dinner with the other remaining Terrors and Erebites; toasts to Captain Fitzjames, Lieutenant Jopson and - _ alright, alright, that’s enough - no, Francis, you must allow us one toast, and then we shall speak no more about it - _Sir Francis Crozier; James, a little drunk by the time the last guests had gone on the celebratory wine that, in his solidarity with Francis, he has rather forgotten how to drink, pressing his palms to either side of Francis’ neck and kissing him deeply. And then Francis bestowing kisses on every one of James’ ribs to bless the comfortable layer of muscle and fat coating them, and murmuring in between just how well-deserved such a promotion had been, how hard James had worked to earn it, how proud he, Francis, was to stand at such a Captain’s elbow - until James had hauled him up the bed to put his mouth to other, less emotionally-fraught uses.

But now, with the dark ink sharp against the pale paper, Francis finds himself scowling and rather wishing for a little less recognition. A little less desire for the heroes of the Franklin expedition to captain new ventures in their own names. A little less _ James - I thought you should know, the talk of the Admiralty is a new Arctic expedition with your name at its head. My very warm congratulations! _

Francis has never wanted to thump James Clarke Ross so much in his life, the man’s fault though it categorically is not.

James had gone just so horribly, terribly still, the letter in his hands still but no longer truly seen by his suddenly blank eyes. As soon as they had recovered enough from the trek and their illnesses and exhaustions to have energy to do so, James has been filling his every waking moment (and several sleeping ones too) with some kind of movement. He taps his fingers on tables, he fusses little things between his long, tapered fingers, he starfishes wildly in his sleep and accidentally thumps Francis in the chest more often than not. So when the foot that had been idly, teasingly running its toes up and down the side of Francis’ calf abruptly halts, and the thumb casually feeling the tip of a fingernail freezes, and James’ eyes become blind to the things in front of them, Francis can’t help the surge of panic rising within him that perhaps James is sick again. That James will look up, blood dripping from his hairline in thick, dark streams like sealing wax and his face turning sallow and gaunt before Francis’ very eyes, and Francis will find them both back on the ice, staring at each other over that _ bloody _ table they’d dragged for miles and miles just because at that table had once sat Sir John, and Doctor Stanley, and half a dozen other whole and healthy men. Perhaps he never left that table, and this is simply the moment when he wakes up.

The paper, when proffered, cuts sharply through the air in a jerky and abrupt movement. James is still staring blindly at his unfinished breakfast and when Francis reaches out for the letter he is wary, fingers trembling ever so slightly as he accepts the paper with as much trepidation as one might a loaded and somewhat erratic gun. He reads only so far as James must have done - _ congratulations! _ is the man mad? - and then looks back at him.

“I will have to go back,” James says rather absently, and terror roils in Francis’ stomach as if their townhouse is a ship encased in ice and it has just shifted horribly under his feet.

“No,” he whispers, and then, firmer, “No. No, James, you cannot go. You cannot ever go back.”

James tilts his head curiously, but his voice remains strangely devoid of feeling and interest. “Am I not to earn my commission?”

“You have,” Francis insists, leaning forward over the table and in so doing dislodging James’ foot from his leg. “A hundred, a thousand times over. James, you cannot go back to the Arctic. Not after what we’ve been through.”

“Francis, you went to the Arctic, even after _ what you went through _ with Ross,” James points out. His idle interest is incongruous to Francis’ wild, barely-tamed panic; he is prodding at the conversation with the same mild, emotionless curiosity with which Jopson had once, quite calmly, prodded at an incisor with his tongue until he eventually spat the offending tooth out during the very last command meeting held on King William Island.

Fear makes a horror of him. “James, you cannot go. It would kill you, and I cannot have it.”

James finally looks up, eyes no longer blank but edged somewhat with anger. “Whereas such an expedition would not kill _ you _ ? Not the _ great polar explorer, _ Francis Crozier?”

“I-” Francis casts his hands about him, helpless and frightened and cross. “This is not about me - I was not asked to go!”

He knows he has misstepped as soon as the words have left his mouth, the conversation shifting when he puts weight on it like sand. James laughs cruelly, turning away and carding a hand through his hair, and Francis can remember when that hand was skeletal and that hair lank and dry - can James himself have so quickly forgotten? “Oh, is that it?” James says, all mocking politeness and Francis flinches even as his brows harden into sternness. How far they had come, apparently so briefly, from those early days on Erebus under Sir John’s indolent gaze. “Could it be that the recognition you now profess to hate is in fact what you consider your due? Shall I not take it, Francis, and beg of the Admiralty to take your esteemed self instead? For God’s sake, man, I was a captain out there, too.”

Francis stretches out hesitantly across the table, his fingers creeping closer to cover the very tips of James’ nails. He feels oddly ungrounded without James brushing against him, as if Francis is liable to be washed away on his tide of fear without somebody to whom he can cling. “James, please,” he says, very close to begging himself. “It’s not about whatever glory-related snit you’ve worked yourself up into - it’s about you. How do you suppose I should carry on if you never came home?”

James retracts his fingers from under Francis’ fingertips sharply, pulling them into a fist, and Francis tries not to feel that he is losing James himself just as quickly. “Then, this is about you,” James retorts. “How grievously would it detract from your triumph for one of _ your _ rescuees to put your work to waste, do you suppose?”

Panic is put to use as rage, and Francis balls up his own fist in turn and thumps the table between them. “God damn you, James,” he snarls, trying to ignore the prickling upset behind the bridge of his nose. “We’re not all so preoccupied with fame as you,” he says, when what he means to say is _ I don’t give a damn about any bloody triumph; I love you, and would see you safe with me. _

But he doesn’t say the words he means to, and James leans back, cold and closed to him. “I’m going out,” James says calmly, coolly, as if Francis were almost nothing to him. An acquaintance; not worth even disliking.

“Where?” Francis grinds out.

James stands, pushing his chair neatly under the table behind him. The frosted ambivalence to Francis’ distress cuts deeper than anything. James might as well have hit him with the bloody chair, for how much it hurts Francis. “Not the Arctic just yet, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he says, and then he abandons Francis to nurse this parting blow as if nothing in that room could interest James less.

* * *

Francis does not ever have to invite Sophia to visit; she appears to have decided that their long years of being important to one another has rendered waiting upon ceremony unnecessary, and so she simply sends him a note informing him when she will visit or when he is expected at her home. It seems to suit her, and certainly reduces his own awkwardness over how often is too often when calling upon one’s former sweetheart. But he breaks tradition today - he finds he cannot face her, or anyone, or the world at all, and so sends a short note begging off their tea before retreating to his study.

Sophia hunts him there. A surprised glance between her unimpressed face and the carriage clock on the shelf proves her earlier even than had been originally arranged; in fact, she must have left as soon as she received his note. Her arms are folded before her, one eyebrow raised, and the effect is so overwhelmingly that of a chiding schoolmarm that Francis finds himself very quickly reduced to his long-distant role of errant pupil, shuffling his feet in guilty apology for his poor spelling. He sighs and ceases his pacing; she will not go without knowing precisely what it is that bothers him so. “Would you care to take tea in the sitting room?” he says, holding a hand out to the door and falling back on almost pained politeness in lieu of knowing quite what else to say.

There are always moments, walking with Sophia through his home and ringing for her tea and handing her a cushion before she can ask for it as she sits on his settee, when Francis glimpses a future that might have been his own, once. Not now, of course; a great many changes and possibly a fair few deaths would be required for such a reality to occur. Francis cannot even be certain that he would have enjoyed that life, should it have come to pass, and he would not ever give up what he has for it, but it is curious nevertheless to look briefly through the window into a life he could have had.

Perhaps he would have developed an immunity to her set-jawed determination. But then, he gathers that Lady Sophia Bentham has the Right Honourable Lord Justice Bentham falling over himself to do any and all things his wife might desire, so perhaps proximity only exacerbates things.

“How is your husband?” he says, deflecting from her desired topic whilst he pours the tea. Really Sophia ought to be mother, but Francis is long used to taking on that role as part of his endless quest to provide for James whatever it is he might require, whether that be shelter or food or the gift of a cup of tea.

Sophia smiles sweetly, ducking her head. “He is very well,” she says warmly, and Francis can’t help an answering smile of his own. It really is a comfort to him to know that Bentham makes her happy and keeps her in safe security; to know that someone is, to her, what he could not ever be. “And James,” she says, looking at him over the rim of her cup. “How is dear Captain Fitzjames?”

He has not ever spoken to her of what he and James are to each other, but nor has Sophia ever required him to. She had taken his decision to take up with James upon his return and not with her very well - far better than he had any right to expect - and immediately upon going out of mourning for Sir John had put on her nicest lilac dress and set about informing Lord Bentham that his suit would now be tolerated and even welcomed. It was flattering to think that he, Francis, meant enough to her to have right of first refusal, but in truth he did not like to think of her waiting upon his return whilst he was - whilst he and James - well. So it is pleasing to hear her happy in her choice and with her inferences of his own decision, as well. It is pleasing, too, to speak of Bentham and James in the same breath, in recognition of the parallel roles they play.

But she knows too much, and it is too much to hope that she will not mark the slight hesitation of his hand as he adds a sugar cube to his tea, or the deliberate level of his voice as he says, “Well, thank you.”

Sophia pins him with an unimpressed look, sufficient power behind it to skewer him without Francis even needing to meet her eyes. “Is he, now,” she says sharply. “And yourself, Francis?”

“Perfectly adequate,” he grinds out, teeth gritted and elbows on his knees.

“False.” Sophia strikes faster than a snake, when minded to, and clearly she has decided that he deserves it. “You wrote me a note professing indisposition only this morning. I have it here, should you wish to peruse the evidence.”

Francis shoots her a half-hearted glare over the rim of his teacup. She is right, of course, and they both know it. “Your husband has been coaching you, I see.”

Sophia leans back, triumphant and just a touch smug, to sip her tea. “The prosecution rests, sir. But, Francis, really; what is it?”

Francis looks up from his knotted fingers at last and winces at the open concern that has uncovered itself on Sophia’s face. He has never had any desire to drag her into misery - it has simply been the entropic state of their relationship to one another. “James - is well, truly,” he says, directing his eyes and words back at his feet. James and Sophia have always got on well, without Sir John or spectres of what could have been to disrupt them, and Francis can see her in his periphery relax slightly at the confirmation. Francis takes a deep breath and injects what dredges of levity he can conjure up into his voice. “He is to have an expedition, if he wants it. To the Arctic. I am - tremendously proud of him.”

“Oh, Francis,” Sophia says, so terribly softly. She leans forward and wraps her fingers around his meshed, strained-white knuckles. “Francis, I am so sorry.”

He ducks his head yet further and lifts their joined hands to press her knuckles to his forehead. “I cannot - I cannot lose him,” he whispers, eyes screwed tight shut and breath almost gasping. Quickly, he presses the briefest kiss to her hand and stands, too abrupt for her to hold on and prevent his escape to the window. The glass is fogged with the cool and damp of the season and does a better job of reflecting the room than of displaying the outdoors; he can see driving rain on the grey streets and his own grey, washed out face staring back with a kind of bleak, dissociated despair. Sophia, behind him, sighs deeply, but seems - if not content, then at least resigned to allowing him this moment to compose himself. She had not used to: had prodded and pushed at him until he had flown off the handle and shouted about whatever comment from her uncle had upset him this time, and then she had shouted back about whatever comment he had just made about her uncle that had upset her, and then invariably they had ended up kissing each other with the kind of ferocity more usually associated with biting and fighting than loving. As if that had been a result either of them could laud as a victory over the other, or over Sir John.

But they do not do that anymore, and Francis is glad of it. Not only because of James, but also Sophia herself, with whom he finds it much easier to converse now that they are not trying to be something to one another which it was not beneficial for them to be.

“Have you spoken to James about it?” Sophia asks, after a decent interval. Francis turns back to the room. She is pretending to fuss with something on her lap, allowing him a little grace from the weight of her eyes should he need to conceal errant emotion from her for his own comfort, and it is a kindness that fills him with a surge of gratitude and fondness.

“I have.” Sophia risks eye contact, and holds his gaze when she sees him equal to it. “It - did not go well.”

“Well, I imagine it is a difficult thing for him to give up,” she says in a neutral voice. _ He is a difficult thing for me to give up_, Francis thinks, but does not say. “Refusal is unlikely to land him a different commission somewhere warmer, even with all his influence. And he is giving up a chance to put his name on a map - that is not nothing.”

“Some frozen crevice at the arse-end of the world,” Francis grumbles.

“That’s easy for you to say, Captain Sir Francis Crozier of Crozier Cape,” Sophia snaps back with rather more venom than Francis had expected. He blinks in the face of it; perhaps, in hindsight, _ arse-end _ was not the language to employ in the presence of a titled lady. But then Sophia calms herself with a breath and says, quite evenly, “It is not always so easy to put one’s name to something and see oneself remembered. To live in a man’s shadow can be - very difficult.”

“Ah.” Perhaps she is right, and Francis has forgotten, in the glow of his knighthood and his legacy, that he too was once nothing but Sir John’s second, the unwanted Irishman. James has every right to keep fighting - this captaincy, this expedition, is the recognition he has spent such an age reaching for and that he so rightly deserves. But - Francis frowns. “Sophia,” he begins awkwardly, “I have not - shaded you, have I?”

She gives him a look of exasperated, resigned fondness. “No, dear, not you personally,” Sophia says gently. “It is simply rather more difficult for a lady to be recognised for her accomplishments than it is for a man. I could not very well join the Navy and christen somewhere Cracroft Cape - besides, I am a Bentham these days. I would not even give my own name, now.”

Sophia is quite perfectly still, eyes staring without seeing at her neatly-folded hands in her lap and her lower lip caught between her teeth in thought. She looks, suddenly, tremendously sad, as if there has been a terrible and constant disappointment within her that has forever been concealed by the thinnest mask of joy - a mask that has now slipped. Francis crosses the room on long strides and sits beside her, removing one of her hands from her knee and cradling it in both of his own. She looks up at him and finds in his fond, fretful expression cause to close her eyes, smiling softly with a slight laugh at her own expense. “Bentham is a fine name,” he says, pressing her hand gently with worry.

“The very finest,” she says, opening her eyes and patting his hand in comfort. “And besides, who says I shall never name anything? I have christened two of Benjamin’s hunting dogs-” A laugh, a proper one, bubbles at the corners of her words, and Francis cannot help but duck his head and quietly join in. “-and very silly names I gave them too! Whoever heard of a spaniel called Cracroft, or Sophus? It is Greek for wisdom, I am told, and a more ridiculous dog never lived. Benjamin has given me free rein to choose our child’s name, too, although I think he is relieved to have a few more months in which I might come up with a rather better legacy to bestow upon the child.”

Francis looks up, caught off guard, and Sophia’s eyes sparkle. She always did delight in surprising. “You are - my congratulations, Sophia.”

She presses his hand again. “Thank you.” It is curious, somehow, to think of her as a mother - as if, suddenly, Sophia has grown up before his very eyes when in truth she might have been a parent years ago, had things been different. But Francis is pleased, really. He had never been sure of children; too afraid, in some deep dark place, that it would prove him to be nothing but his father’s son. Sophia had always known what she wanted from a husband, and on too many points Francis did not match up - but Bentham does. Francis cannot begrudge them their joy, and would not even try for the world.

“I am glad-” he says, the feeling of curiously nostalgic elation and its expression an unfamiliar shape in his mouth and one awkward to get out.

“I know,” Sophia soothes, and Francis nods over her hand. She taps his knuckle lightly with a fingertip and smiles. “Perhaps - _ Francis _Bentham?”

He makes a face and she laughs. “Must you?” he grumbles. “There are plenty of other namesakes, you know.”

“But none so grumpy,” she says merrily, and he has to roll his eyes and compress his lips against a smile. And then Sophia squeezes his hand and takes a deep breath. “I would name him James if it would make him stay.”

Francis slams his eyes shut and turns his head away in a full, visceral flinch. Sophia pets his hand and coos soothing words, but it has suddenly hit Francis like a punch in the gut that he is the worst kind of man, if he denies James the right to a legacy. There is already enough of Francis and James that the world will never know. Their names will never be passed on together, as are those of Sir John and Lady Jane Franklin; Francis can never give to James the gift of a real surname and a far-reaching family line, as Lord Bentham gave to Sophia. Those marks cannot be made in their pages of history, and he has no right to prevent James from writing something in their stead.

“I cannot stop him,” he gasps out, ignoring Sophia’s attempts to deny it. “I must not. And you cannot force him, either.”

“Francis - you do not yet know that he will go,” Sophia tries, but she was not there that morning, she does not _ know- _ “He might choose to remain.”

Francis turns baleful eyes upon her. “But - you know. His legacy. His name.”

“He may yet give it up, Francis, for you. As I gave up my name for Benjamin.” Sophia runs the tips of her fingers through the greying hair at his temple, all maternal worry and sweetness. “Would you not give up the sea for him?”

Francis goes cold. Every answer is slightly dangerous, somehow - he knows well enough why she would not have him, and how greatly it pained them both for him to seek to marry himself both to Sophia and to the Navy. “I did not - I do not wish to hurt you,” he hedges in apology.

Sophia nods. “So,” she says firmly, as if that has decided it. “You would turn down an expedition for him; he could well do the same for you.”

Francis closes his eyes and shakes his head slightly. “Perhaps.”

The front door abruptly opens with a bang and Francis starts to his feet, placing himself between Sophia and the door with the muscle memory bestowed upon him by his father. Their maid is squeaking something nervous, but he cannot hear her well enough over the sharp bootfalls echoing in the hall to know the intruder’s identity. The handle of the sitting room door turns - impossibly slowly, it seems to Francis - and he can’t help the slightest touch of fear down his spine, inherited from his childhood self.

But then - the door opens, and the man on the other side is James, and there is barely enough time for Francis to untense and for James to nudge the door closed behind him with his heel before Francis has both his hands caught up in James’. “Francis, I can’t do it, I can’t go; I won’t go back, they can’t make me.” He is clinging tight to Francis as if one or other of them is liable to be ripped away by a great wave, and talking altogether too quickly. “You were right - I only didn’t wish for you to be. I wished only to be worthy of my name, and I am not-”

“You are,” Francis growls, voice firm and brooking no opposition. “James, you deserve a great many things - only, one of those things is to retire quietly, if you should like to, and never see the ice again.”

James closes his eyes and nods, the tension leaving him in a great slump of his shoulders. “I am sorry, Francis,” he says quietly. “I said some terrible things to you, when I have been more deserving of being called a glory-hunter than you ever have.”

Francis squeezes James’ fingers. “There is nothing wrong,” he murmurs, “with wishing to be remembered.”

James opens his eyes and reaches their joined hands to the corner of Francis’ jaw. The kiss that follows is sweet and slow; edged slightly with James’ desperation to pour his apology into the gesture. Francis closes his eyes and sways into James’ warm, solid presence with a relief that feels like coming home.

Francis leans back and James knocks their foreheads together gently with a smile. Their fingers continue to tangle, gently stroking over each other but never ever letting go. “You really are not going?” Francis whispers. James beams at him, and rubs the corner of Francis’ own uncontrollable smiling joy with the edge of his thumb -

\- and then there is a delicate, deliberate cough, and both Francis’ and James’ eyes go abruptly very wide.

Francis steps back smartly, unable to quite resist keeping James’ hand firmly in his own a little longer. The relief that comes from James not leaving for the Arctic after all will, he suspects, take quite some time to overcome. “James, Sophia has come for tea,” he says, quite redundantly, and gestures with even less purpose at their guest, the detritus from their tea, and the room in general.

Sophia is politely and studiously examining wallpaper she has seen a hundred times over. Once she has deemed it safe, she turns away from the wall and smiles at James as if he had only just entered. “James,” she greets him warmly.

James blinks, and then recollects himself. “Lady Bentham,” he says with a short bow.

Sophia looks rather like she is resisting the urge to roll her eyes, so Francis does it for her. “You might use _ her _ name, James,” he says.

James grins and runs a hand through his hand with a little embarrassment. “My apologies: Sophia.”

Francis catches Sophia’s eye, hoping that his deliberate emphasis did not go unmarked or, worse, unwanted - but then her eyes crinkle up and she bestows upon him a brilliantly bright grin, and if Francis could only somehow record such incredible smiles as he finds in this room, and put his name to it as their cause, then that would be legacy enough.

**Author's Note:**

> "are you crying about the legacy of queer people and women in history again?"  
"'there are many names in history but none of them are ours' got to me."  
"alright."


End file.
